ArtStorming
Ever wonder what makes really creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? In each episode of ArtStorming, we’ll explore how new ideas come to life, and how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new.
Host Lili Pierrepont takes us on a journey of discovery; inviting us to ponder what drives and sustains the creative spark within each individual.
With great appreciation for music written and performed by John Cruickshank.
ArtStorming
ArtStorming the City Different: Lili Pierrepont
"What would creativity do?" The question that transformed my retirement anxiety into the ArtStorming podcast. Now 30+ episodes in, I'm just getting started. Season 2 will explore art, legacy & death—because the most meaningful conversations often begin at the edges.
Music for ArtStorming the City Different was written and performed by John Cruikshank.
Ever wonder what makes really creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? Is their life really as much fun as it looks from the outside?
Speaker 1:Hello, I'm your host, lili Pierpont, and this is ArtStorming, a podcast about how new ideas come to life and become paintings, sculptures, plays or poems, performances or collections. Each episode, I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. So my next guest is me, your host, lili Pierpont. Almost a full season and we're just over a year in. I decided it might be a good idea for me to give you some context how we got here, where we're going. Heartfelt thank you to all my guests and listeners for supporting this project so far.
Speaker 1:I had no idea when I started this project that it would become such a labor of love and courage and, as you'll hear, it took quite a leap of faith. I also want to lead with saying that doing this episode is really outside my comfort zone, even though I've published 30 conversations to date. It's a whole other thing to be here alone with the mic. But one of the reasons I took on this project was to test the theory that by providing listeners with insights into the creative process, they could be inspired and encouraged to embark on journeys of their own. So it's only fair that I share some of what my journey has been, because it hasn't been a straight line and certainly not always comfortable, but I have to say it has been magic. I attribute some of that magic to Santa Fe, the city different here in the land of enchantment. There's a saying here in Santa Fe that, or there's a saying here that Santa Fe either draws you in or spits you out.
Speaker 1:When I decided to pause here eight years ago, I didn't know what plans Santa Fe had for me, but I guess Santa Fe did. And I say pause because at that time in my life I was on this walkabout Well, sort of a driveabout really A five-month cross-country solo road trip. I called it my Art Across America tour and there's a backstory that I won't go into here. But that road trip was the beginning of that great streak of magic which, in retrospect, was leading me unwittingly and meanderingly to Santa Fe. Had I known, I would have been dead set against it.
Speaker 1:I had history with Santa Fe. My mother had moved here in the late 80s and lived here until her untimely death in 1994. I'd come out from time to time, mostly for the picturesque, snowy Christmases, and I must have also come out for spring at some point, because I can still see and smell the lilacs and wisteria draping all over the adobe walls and the turquoise blue skies, and it was enchanting for sure. But the tragedy of my mother's fatal skydiving accident kind of turned me off of everything that had initially attracted me. That last time I came back to Santa Fe for her memorial service, I never imagined I'd step foot in this town again, and I didn't until 22 years later.
Speaker 1:So people who know me know that I've moved around a lot and I've had many different chapters, and I guess I've gotten pretty good at reinventing myself. The only thing the chapters haven't had in common is that I never know what's coming next, and my Art Across America tour in 2016 was no exception. It was essentially a research trip, part exploring art, part exploring myself, with a dash of trying to put some distance between myself and a recent painful experience. I was raw and wide open, with a glimmer of a plan, and the plan was that, wherever I ultimately landed, I was preparing to launch an art travel business called Urban Art Tripping. So this trip was partially scouting possible art locations to take future clients. But I had no particular itinerary, I just followed my nose and I found some great destinations. I mean, I could do a whole episode just on the road trip, and maybe someday I will.
Speaker 1:Anyway, about halfway through the trip, I met up with some old pals in Marfa, texas, and we did the art thing in Marfa. And then we headed up to Santa Fe and it was my first time back since mom's accident, but I was with good friends and we had a fantastic time. And then the girls headed back to the east coast and I decided to hang out in Santa Fe for a few more days before continuing on my journey. It was strange to be back, and there's a lot more to this story but, among other things, I ended up running into some old friends of my mother's and well, I kind of can't explain it, something just shifted. Long story short, I continued my trip for another couple of months and then I ended up coming back through Santa Fe for Christmas of 2016.
Speaker 1:By that time I'd been on the road for about five months and I was road-weary. I found a rental and decided to give myself a year to figure things out. But before that year came to a close, I had purchased a house and had established the global headquarters for urban art-tripping, santa Fe. But instead of urban art-tripping across America, I decided to offer immersive, art-based excursions to off-the-beaten-path international destinations like Tbilisi, japan and South Africa. The plan was that I would take a small group of mostly empty-nester women to tour art studios and private collections by day, with special events planned for the evening. By day, with special events planned for the evening.
Speaker 1:I wanted to provide my clients with the same kind of thrill of the unknown that I had experienced on my road trip, to ignite all of their senses, encourage courageous explorations and provide unforgettable experiences that would unite the group in a very intimate way. And because of all the magic that I discovered here in Santa Fe, I also designed a similar five-day offering here, and it featured morning rituals to prepare the client for a shift of sensory perceptions that we'd, you know, experience later in the day. And then we'd spend the day conversing with various hand-selected artists in their studios and then finish the day with a special dining event in either a gallery or the home of a private collector. So it was a really deep dive into the creative process and community and I loved introducing visitors to all the amazing people that I'd met since moving here and I loved exposing them to the passion and creativity of the arts in this immersive way and I was so looking forward to the conversations that would ensue and the adventures we have and all the communities we would build.
Speaker 1:And then, literally the month I was to formally launch poof COVID, suddenly we were all holed up in our little bubbles of safety and just trying not to get sick alone, isolated, and trying not to go mad alone, isolated, and trying not to go mad. And we all have our versions of how that went right. Anyway, as the world started to come back online, it seemed a different place. Suddenly, the idea of taking groups of people to faraway places or even hosting them here in Santa Fe no longer felt like a prudent idea. I was crushed. I mean, I still firmly believed in the values of those immersive experiences.
Speaker 1:I had spent many months, even years, cultivating relationships and formulating the most exciting and evocative experiences I could imagine. And now what? Well? That question lingered with me for a long time I kept asking myself what was at the very heart of urban art tripping and what was I really trying to accomplish? What might be another way of accomplishing that sense of community and exploration without all the worrisome downsides? I mean, should I just retire? And what did that even mean? Now I was in the exact situation with the same dilemma as the women for whom I'd created Urban Art Tripping, and then I thought what would creativity do? I sat with that question for months.
Speaker 1:Then one day I was walking down the beach on the East Coast listening to a podcast hosted by Julia Louis Dreyfus called Wiser Than Me, and I was listening with the hope of gleaning some morsels of wisdom about how to either retire gracefully or enter into my third act, as Jane Fonda called it in her episode. It was so inspiring to hear all these fabulous Wiser Than Me women share their insights, and they reminded me of so many of my I call them octogenarian women friends here in Santa Fe, and I started thinking I need to go back to Santa Fe and record some of those conversations with my fabulous older women friends. And then it hit me how about conversations with all my artist friends? Wouldn't that be fun, and not just from the Santa Fe community, but all the artists I've met along the way and that I've wanted to introduce to others. And what if I could take those inspiring exchanges and broadcast them to a larger audience? Well, maybe this was an even better idea.
Speaker 1:I had already personally experienced the positive impact that conversations with creatives had had on my own life. I knew firsthand how powerful it is to have access to one's creativity for everything from solving simple life problems to solving the question of what to do next on one's personal journey. If at the heart of urban art tripping was the desire to connect people to their own creative reserves by exposing them to the people whose day-to-day lives are all about that, then a podcast might accomplish that and keep me engaged in that conversation as well. Hmm, win-win. I decided to explore what was already out there, assuming that I would find a ton, and actually, to my surprise, I didn't find a whole lot. There were podcasts about art and artists, but none that I could find that had that inquiry into the creative process that I was searching for. So that's where the concept of art storming was born, and that was the summer of 2023.
Speaker 1:Up to that point, my only experience of podcasts besides that Julia Louis-Dreyfus series, which had inspired me was the occasional serial thriller on a road trip. I knew exactly nothing about how to structure a podcast, how to record a podcast, how to market a podcast nothing. And so this whole thing began as a lark, sprinkled with some, you know, hope that maybe I'd find a way to recover from the curveball that COVID had thrown me. And you know continue my deep curiosity about the creative process. I was not sure whether I'd be an effective interviewer or even find an audience, but I knew how to have conversations and I had a ton of people I wanted to talk to. I even figured I had the beginnings of an audience because I, during COVID, I had started an online arts club on social media which had grown to about 3,000 members, so surely at least some of these people would be interested in these conversations. So I figured I had content and an audience and I could learn how to use a mic, and I was pretty sure that I could learn everything else I needed to know from watching a YouTube video.
Speaker 1:And so I got enthusiastic about the project and felt optimistic because, unlike urban art tripping, it wasn't gonna, you know, have, I wasn't gonna have to go out on a huge financial limb to explore it further and at this point my ignorance was still bliss. So I shared the idea with my family and, to my surprise, they thought it was a really good idea and suggested that I set it up as a 501c3. They knew that I had sunk everything into urban art tripping and thought it would be prudent for me to structure it as a nonprofit so that if it did work I could get support from foundations, grants and private funding et cetera. But I wasn't all that gung-ho on the nonprofit idea. It felt like more of a commitment that I was willing to make at that point and I knew that the learning curve on producing the podcast was going to be steep enough. Plus, I'd been on the inside of nonprofits enough to know how challenging it can be to build a functional organization with a cooperative working board and all that. But I thought, what the hell? Okay, I'll set it up and just see what would happen. And if the podcast didn't work out, maybe the next harebrained idea would. And you know, remember I told you about those gal pals that I met up with in Marfa. Well, I recruited them to be my executive board and the nonprofit Art Bridge was born.
Speaker 1:I spent the next few months researching everything from setting up a non-profit to what mic to use, to what platform to use to host it and basically everything that it was going to take to make a go of it, and I still had not taped a single conversation. I did my first interview using my iPhone as a mic, but then I realized I needed to get the recording from my phone into a format that could be heard by others. Long story short, there was a lot to learn. I did my first interview in the fall and, as I suspected, that was the easiest part of the process. Once I learned the equipment, I approached other artist friends and asked them if they'd be my guinea pigs and, to my surprise, all agreed, and before I knew it, I had recorded 12 interviews.
Speaker 1:I then had to figure out how I was going to edit, package, distribute, market my first batch of episodes, and at that time I also decided that, since the first batch were all in Santa Fe, it might be fun to have a companion group exhibition of the artwork to kick off the series. Now, my beau at the time had a gallery that was in between programs, and so when I suggested the idea, he was enthusiastic. Incidentally, he was also one of the people I'd interviewed, so he was already on board with the whole thing and really supportive. By the end of April 2024, I started dropping episodes and by the kickoff party in June I'd published 16 episodes and hung an exhibition representing all 16 guests. I considered the whole thing a huge success at close to a thousand downloads at that point and I was having a blast. The feedback I was getting was really positive and, as far as I was concerned, the experiment had worked. Feedback I was getting was really positive and, as far as I was concerned, the experiment had worked.
Speaker 1:I was ready to call season one a wrap and move on to second season. I actually have seven distinct ideas for seasons based on various topics, but at this time I was no longer in the ignorance is bliss phase. Getting these first 16 episodes had been a Herculean task and a huge learning curve had been a Herculean task and a huge learning curve. I knew that if I wanted to do more, I'd need to dial in more of a structure and I'd need to get some help and resources beyond my own savings. I started to really appreciate my family's logic of creating a non-profit business structure to support the project, and so, after the launch party exhibition came down, I turned my focus to building an infrastructure to carry it all.
Speaker 1:It was clear that my strength was actually producing the podcasts, but the other aspects of making the series successful were equally important and screaming for attention. It was then that I decided to give myself a little break and, rather than go into a new season, I'd continue with City Different while I worked out the internal support structures and there were certainly several more people to talk to. I mean, I barely scratched the surface, and I can tell you that 30 plus episodes in at a rate of two per month, I still haven't scratched the surface. So I could probably keep the focus to Santa Fe, but I do have more than I want to do. So we still have several episodes planned for the remainder of the season, for season one, and then we have a really exciting grand finale episode, which I'm going to tell you about.
Speaker 1:So, as I mentioned earlier, one of the key purposes of hosting and posting these conversations with creatives is to help all of us activate our own imaginations for problem solving and enhancing our own quality of life on an individual level. But how might we use these conversations or conversations like this to solve problems and enhance our quality of life at the community level? In pondering that question, I thought it would be interesting to open the lens and have the last few conversations be with leaders from the various community arts organizations here in Santa Fe to explore how we can use our collective creativity to solve our greater community challenges. I mean especially now with all the changes happening that are directly impacting our arts communities and communities everywhere. Really Well, the result of that pondering is that my nonprofit, artbridge, and I, in my role as host of ArtStorming, are partnering with the Center for Contemporary Arts here in Santa Fe for an event we're calling the Collaboration Lab, and Collaboration Lab will be a four-part series of panel discussions on the state of the arts in Santa Fe and New Mexico. The idea is to address the critical need for community mobilization, partnerships and collaboration in these extremely challenging and tumultuous times. These art-storming talks will happen on Wednesday evenings in July, culminating in a final event where all the ideas are brought together and woven into working partnerships and actionable ideas for future collaborations. So all the sessions will be recorded and then I'll create an abbreviated version for the final episode of season one, and if you're local, I hope you'll join us for the live event. And if you're local, I hope you'll join us for the live event. And if you're not local, I'm sure there'll be plenty of relevant and exportable ideas that you can get from the podcast for your own communities.
Speaker 1:Now, after that event, artstorming will start to roll out season two. We'll be broadening the geographical scope and talking to artists from all over the country about art and legacy and death. As muse Funds permitting, season two will also have a companion exhibition of memorial arts. Objects, which will be titled, remains to be Seen. My hope for this is to be a traveling exhibition, so if you know of any fabulous creatives that you think would fit into the category or spaces that might like to host the exhibitions, I'd love to hear from you. And, as with season one, I have a feeling I could extend this season to a full year or more, since there are so many interesting and inspiring ways to talk about death and legacy, and it's a topic which has depth after death, so stay tuned for lots more about that. Season three just a sneak preview will focus on art, the arts and neurodiversity, and I'm calling that one Mind at Large. And there are more than seasons after that. So no shortage of conversations to be had and already many, many ideas emerging about how we can turn these conversations into actionable initiatives. And yes, it's ambitious, but these are important and necessary conversations, all of them. So that's my story so far.
Speaker 1:I hope you will tune in and listen to more episodes, share these conversations with people who you think will enjoy them. And here's the big ask Engage, explore, discover what makes your heart sing, talk to strangers and, if you feel so moved, please do join us in our mission to cultivate curiosity and imagination in our world. You can go to our Artbridge website, join our sub stack, subscribe and support us in any way that feels right to you. You could even become a member of what we're calling our Arts Corps Think Peace Corps for the arts boots on the ground. The details are on our website. Thank you and art on. Well, thanks for joining us today. Please like and follow us on artstormingorg, where you'll find a list of our shows, a transcript of this episode with links to the guest page, as well as our other projects. Art Storming is brought to you and supported by Artbridge and listeners like you Look for us on your favorite podcast platforms.
